In recent weeks, we have had two striking examples of why a "safety culture" is critical in reducing the dangerous risks posed by business operations.

One, the death of 29 workers in an explosion at Massey Energy Company's Upper Big Branch Mine, illustrates the catastrophic impact when such a culture is missing. The second, the halting of air transport due to the ash cloud from an Icelandic volcano, shows the power of a robust safety culture in learning from past incidents to avoid catastrophic events in the future.

The contrast is, if you will pardon the phrase, no accident. Underground mining is hidden from public view and, although coal as an energy source affects hundreds of millions, an accident in a mine does not put fear in households around the world receiving electricity from coal-burning plants. Air transport, of course, is one of the world's most visible businesses, and a fatal accident is front of mind for the hundreds of millions globally who fly during the course of a year.

It is no accident, too, because although I am no expert, it appears that the Mine Safety and Health Administration is not a strong regulatory agency. It has relatively weak tools (no subpoena power), weak sanctions (misdemeanors for serious safety violations) and a spotty enforcement record. By contrast, the Federal Aviation Administration and its global counterparts, are very tough on safety issues and have, among other things, the power to suspend or stop air operations at great commercial and reputational risk to industry members.

A safety culture is essential to public protection. Broadly defined, culture consists of the shared principles (the policies, values, and attitudes) and shared practices (the norms, systems, and processes) which influence how people in organizations -- in this case in businesses -- feel, think, and behave.

A safety culture has a strong credo which puts this value first and which backs it up with strong internal and operational commitment to safety resources, to safety processes, to safety checks and balances, to safety audits, to continuous risk assessment and safety improvements, and to safety performance across all these dimensions as a critical component in employee retention, promotion, and compensation. This culture must flow from both the aspirations and the actions of top leadership.

In most industries, strong safety regulation is a necessary condition to a culture of safety inside a business, but it is not sufficient. Without the deep commitment of top leadership to performance with safety, the essential safety culture will not exist.

The exemplary safety conduct of the air transport industry during the past week (however great the resulting travel and economic disruption) has its origins more than 25 years ago when engines on two 747s were severely damaged in Indonesian airspace from an eruption of volcanic ash clouds from Java Island. Over the next decade, other incidents of engine damage from volcanic ash were reported. The industry learned that ash particles, which may not be visible to the naked eye or to radar, sticks to an engine's hot parts, form a dangerous coating, and thus restricts air flow through the engine which can cause in-flight shut-downs.

The industry -- regulators, airlines, plane, and engine manufacturers -- developed protocols to avoid such ash clouds whatever the commercial cost. (With traffic still stalled, a factual debate is beginning, however, as to whether the ash cloud conditions still exist over parts of Europe.) This was consistent with fundamental industry practice of rigorous analysis of all safety incidents, detailed root cause analyses, and continuously revised safety practices.

By contrast, when 29 miners die in a mine -- a man-made structure which has been used for decades -- it is seems inescapable that a safety culture was absent at Massey's Upper Big Branch facility (and perhaps across the company). Although investigations into the precise causes are just beginning, the mine was cited 515 times in 2009 for safety violations by the Mine Safety and Health Administration -- with commentators noting that 48 of those citations were for issues that could cause serious health and safety problems. And this follows two deaths at another Massey mine in 2006 and a December 2007 letter from MSHA warning of a potential pattern of violations because Upper Big Branch had received 204 serious and significant notice violations in the prior two years, well above the national average.

The commercial and C-suite pressures to cut corners and failures to create a safety culture occur not just at companies out of the public eye (few outside the coal industry had hear of Massey until the Big Branch accident). Toyota's recent travails with safety-related parts will be studied in depth in the future to understand how a company so devoted to quality could have gone so far astray in design, manufacturing, quality control, and crisis management and had a safety culture so seriously eroded.

Another major company -- British Petroleum (BP) -- has already had a major safety failure analyzed in depth. After an explosion at BP's Texas City refinery in 2005 killed 15 and injured 170, an internal BP inquiry and an independent panel appointed by the BP board and chaired by Jim Baker and the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board all made extensive findings which concluded that BP had serious deficiencies in safety management systems and processes and poor corporate safety culture. These findings included a lack of: leadership consistency, systematic risk assessment, effective early warning systems, adequate risk abatement, and appropriate education and training. BP agreed to a to pay tens of millions in criminal and civil proceedings, both governmental and private. The retirement of its iconic CEO, John Brown, was hastened by the safety failure. (In October 2009, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration announced it was levying an $87 million fine against BP for failing to correct problems which caused the 2005 explosion; BP is contesting those charges.)

There will always be debates what precise safety rules should apply. For example, we are about to witness another round in the recurring fight over strengthening mine safety laws.

But responsible companies will have a strong commitment to obeying the spirit and letter of existing safety law. They will also establish their own internal rules, beyond what the laws may require, if an additional margin of safety is required to protect employees, consumers, and communities. In my view, such voluntary action avoids catastrophic impact on the company and has benefits for a corporation inside the company, in the marketplace, and in global society.

In light of these legal and ethical rules, they will adopt the following safety culture credo:

--Our company is built on the foundation of high performance with high integrity, and safety is an essential element of integrity.

--Each senior leader will be held personally accountable.

--There will be no cutting of corners for commercial reasons. Integrity and safety must never be compromised to make the numbers.

--One strike and you're out. You can miss the numbers and survive. You cannot miss on integrity and safety.

This credo can create culture through investigation and discipline of company leaders.
But, more importantly, an affirmative culture, where employees up and down the line want to do what is right, must be created by leadership aspiration and by leadership action in embedding the key safety principles and practices -- risk assessment, risk abatement, continuous improvement, safety auditing, early warning systems, proper education, and training -- deep into business operations.

About the Author

Ben Heineman Jr. is is a senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, in Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and at the Harvard Law School's Program on Corporate Governance. He is the author of High Performance With High Integrity.

Most Popular

Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.

And if thy brother, a Hebrew man, or a Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee, and serve thee six years; then in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free from thee. And when thou sendest him out free from thee, thou shalt not let him go away empty: thou shalt furnish him liberally out of thy flock, and out of thy floor, and out of thy winepress: of that wherewith the LORD thy God hath blessed thee thou shalt give unto him. And thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt, and the LORD thy God redeemed thee: therefore I command thee this thing today.

— Deuteronomy 15: 12–15

Besides the crime which consists in violating the law, and varying from the right rule of reason, whereby a man so far becomes degenerate, and declares himself to quit the principles of human nature, and to be a noxious creature, there is commonly injury done to some person or other, and some other man receives damage by his transgression: in which case he who hath received any damage, has, besides the right of punishment common to him with other men, a particular right to seek reparation.

Even when a dentist kills an adored lion, and everyone is furious, there’s loftier righteousness to be had.

Now is the point in the story of Cecil the lion—amid non-stop news coverage and passionate social-media advocacy—when people get tired of hearing about Cecil the lion. Even if they hesitate to say it.

But Cecil fatigue is only going to get worse. On Friday morning, Zimbabwe’s environment minister, Oppah Muchinguri, called for the extradition of the man who killed him, the Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer. Muchinguri would like Palmer to be “held accountable for his illegal action”—paying a reported $50,000 to kill Cecil with an arrow after luring him away from protected land. And she’s far from alone in demanding accountability. This week, the Internet has served as a bastion of judgment and vigilante justice—just like usual, except that this was a perfect storm directed at a single person. It might be called an outrage singularity.

Writing used to be a solitary profession. How did it become so interminably social?

Whether we’re behind the podium or awaiting our turn, numbing our bottoms on the chill of metal foldout chairs or trying to work some life into our terror-stricken tongues, we introverts feel the pain of the public performance. This is because there are requirements to being a writer. Other than being a writer, I mean. Firstly, there’s the need to become part of the writing “community”, which compels every writer who craves self respect and success to attend community events, help to organize them, buzz over them, and—despite blitzed nerves and staggering bowels—present and perform at them. We get through it. We bully ourselves into it. We dose ourselves with beta blockers. We drink. We become our own worst enemies for a night of validation and participation.

Forget credit hours—in a quest to cut costs, universities are simply asking students to prove their mastery of a subject.

MANCHESTER, Mich.—Had Daniella Kippnick followed in the footsteps of the hundreds of millions of students who have earned university degrees in the past millennium, she might be slumping in a lecture hall somewhere while a professor droned. But Kippnick has no course lectures. She has no courses to attend at all. No classroom, no college quad, no grades. Her university has no deadlines or tenure-track professors.

Instead, Kippnick makes her way through different subject matters on the way to a bachelor’s in accounting. When she feels she’s mastered a certain subject, she takes a test at home, where a proctor watches her from afar by monitoring her computer and watching her over a video feed. If she proves she’s competent—by getting the equivalent of a B—she passes and moves on to the next subject.

Most of the big names in futurism are men. What does that mean for the direction we’re all headed?

In the future, everyone’s going to have a robot assistant. That’s the story, at least. And as part of that long-running narrative, Facebook just launched its virtual assistant. They’re calling it Moneypenny—the secretary from the James Bond Films. Which means the symbol of our march forward, once again, ends up being a nod back. In this case, Moneypenny is a send-up to an age when Bond’s womanizing was a symbol of manliness and many women were, no matter what they wanted to be doing, secretaries.

Why can’t people imagine a future without falling into the sexist past? Why does the road ahead keep leading us back to a place that looks like the Tomorrowland of the 1950s? Well, when it comes to Moneypenny, here’s a relevant datapoint: More than two thirds of Facebook employees are men. That’s a ratio reflected among another key group: futurists.

During the multi-country press tour for Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, not even Jon Stewart has dared ask Tom Cruise about Scientology.

During the media blitz for Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation over the past two weeks, Tom Cruise has seemingly been everywhere. In London, he participated in a live interview at the British Film Institute with the presenter Alex Zane, the movie’s director, Christopher McQuarrie, and a handful of his fellow cast members. In New York, he faced off with Jimmy Fallon in a lip-sync battle on The Tonight Show and attended the Monday night premiere in Times Square. And, on Tuesday afternoon, the actor recorded an appearance on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, where he discussed his exercise regimen, the importance of a healthy diet, and how he still has all his own hair at 53.

Stewart, who during his career has won two Peabody Awards for public service and the Orwell Award for “distinguished contribution to honesty and clarity in public language,” represented the most challenging interviewer Cruise has faced on the tour, during a challenging year for the actor. In April, HBO broadcast Alex Gibney’s documentary Going Clear, a film based on the book of the same title by Lawrence Wright exploring the Church of Scientology, of which Cruise is a high-profile member. The movie alleges, among other things, that the actor personally profited from slave labor (church members who were paid 40 cents an hour to outfit the star’s airplane hangar and motorcycle), and that his former girlfriend, the actress Nazanin Boniadi, was punished by the Church by being forced to do menial work after telling a friend about her relationship troubles with Cruise. For Cruise “not to address the allegations of abuse,” Gibney said in January, “seems to me palpably irresponsible.” But in The Daily Show interview, as with all of Cruise’s other appearances, Scientology wasn’t mentioned.

An attack on an American-funded military group epitomizes the Obama Administration’s logistical and strategic failures in the war-torn country.

Last week, the U.S. finally received some good news in Syria:.After months of prevarication, Turkey announced that the American military could launch airstrikes against Islamic State positions in Syria from its base in Incirlik. The development signaled that Turkey, a regional power, had at last agreed to join the fight against ISIS.

The announcement provided a dose of optimism in a conflict that has, in the last four years, killed over 200,000 and displaced millions more. Days later, however, the positive momentum screeched to a halt. Earlier this week, fighters from the al-Nusra Front, an Islamist group aligned with al-Qaeda, reportedly captured the commander of Division 30, a Syrian militia that receives U.S. funding and logistical support, in the countryside north of Aleppo. On Friday, the offensive escalated: Al-Nusra fighters attacked Division 30 headquarters, killing five and capturing others. According to Agence France Presse, the purpose of the attack was to obtain sophisticated weapons provided by the Americans.

The Wall Street Journal’s eyebrow-raising story of how the presidential candidate and her husband accepted cash from UBS without any regard for the appearance of impropriety that it created.

The Swiss bank UBS is one of the biggest, most powerful financial institutions in the world. As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton intervened to help it out with the IRS. And after that, the Swiss bank paid Bill Clinton $1.5 million for speaking gigs. TheWall Street Journal reported all that and more Thursday in an article that highlights huge conflicts of interest that the Clintons have created in the recent past.

The piece begins by detailing how Clinton helped the global bank.

“A few weeks after Hillary Clinton was sworn in as secretary of state in early 2009, she was summoned to Geneva by her Swiss counterpart to discuss an urgent matter. The Internal Revenue Service was suing UBS AG to get the identities of Americans with secret accounts,” the newspaper reports. “If the case proceeded, Switzerland’s largest bank would face an impossible choice: Violate Swiss secrecy laws by handing over the names, or refuse and face criminal charges in U.S. federal court. Within months, Mrs. Clinton announced a tentative legal settlement—an unusual intervention by the top U.S. diplomat. UBS ultimately turned over information on 4,450 accounts, a fraction of the 52,000 sought by the IRS.”

Members of Colombia's younger generation say they “will not torture for tradition.”

MEDELLÍN, Colombia—On a scorching Saturday in February, hundreds of young men and women in Medellín stripped down to their swimsuit bottoms, slathered themselves in black and red paint, and sprawled out on the hot cement in Los Deseos Park in the north of the city. From my vantage point on the roof of a nearby building, the crowd of seminude protesters formed the shape of a bleeding bull—a vivid statement against the centuries-old culture of bullfighting in Colombia.

It wasn’t long ago that Colombia was among the world’s most important countries for bullfighting, due to the quality of its bulls and its large number of matadors. In his 1989 book Colombia: Tierra de Toros (“Colombia: Land of Bulls”), Alberto Lopera chronicled the maturation of the sport that Spanish conquistadors had introduced to South America in the 16th century, from its days as an unorganized brouhaha of bulls and booze in colonial plazas to a more traditional Spanish-style spectacle whose fans filled bullfighting rings across the country.

Some say the so-called sharing economy has gotten away from its central premise—sharing.

This past March, in an up-and-coming neighborhood of Portland, Maine, a group of residents rented a warehouse and opened a tool-lending library. The idea was to give locals access to everyday but expensive garage, kitchen, and landscaping tools—such as chainsaws, lawnmowers, wheelbarrows, a giant cider press, and soap molds—to save unnecessary expense as well as clutter in closets and tool sheds.

The residents had been inspired by similar tool-lending libraries across the country—in Columbus, Ohio; in Seattle, Washington; in Portland, Oregon. The ethos made sense to the Mainers. “We all have day jobs working to make a more sustainable world,” says Hazel Onsrud, one of the Maine Tool Library’s founders, who works in renewable energy. “I do not want to buy all of that stuff.”